"This work aims to extend the UNESCO Model Curricula for Journalism Education to include new syllabi covering emerging or particularly relevant themes in journalism education globally. As such, it builds on the model curricula – as well as the supplementary UNESCO publication titled A Compendium o
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f New Syllabi – to effectively respond to new issues facing journalism professionals and teachers. This publication is especially opportune in its response to a key development challenge of the next 15 years. With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) coming to an end, and being replaced with what will be called the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs), a long-term pedagogical strategy is called for which can respond to the correlation between a free, independent and pluralistic media system and the overall process of sustainable development. Against this background, all the syllabi in this particular publication are underpinned by the theme of human development, and indicate UNESCO’s unique normative role in promoting good practices and agenda-setting with regard to journalism education worldwide. In this regard, the publication helps to extend our theoretical understanding of journalism as a responsive, dynamic and evolving practice. It is thus a significant step beyond the model curricula originally published in 2007." (Foreword)
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"This course aims to analyse the context in which journalists and communicators are working at local, national, regional and international level, and to help them to identify potential risks, to learn safe protocols and to know about those institutions and procedures that can help them." (Abstract)
"This comprehensive MIL (Media and Information Literacy) Policy and Strategy Guidelines resource is the first of its kind to treat MIL as a composite concept, unifying information literacy and media literacy as well as considering the right to freedom of expression and access to information through
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ICTs [...] The MIL Policy and Strategy Guidelines resource is divided into two parts. Part 1 is the MIL Policy Brief, and is designed for policy or decision makers and can serve as a summary of the publication. Part 2 is divided into several comprehensive chapters and suggests: 1) how to enlist MIL a development tool; 2) conceptual frameworks for MIL policies and strategies; and 3) model MIL policy and strategies that can be adapted by countries globally." (Foreword)
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"Press freedom indices such as those administered by Freedom House, IREX, and Reporters Without Borders have emerged as crucial tools, not only for the general public, but also for donors, implementers, and academics in their attempts to understand the relationships among media assistance, democrati
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zation, and other forms of development. Bringing together a variety of viewpoints and perspectives on evaluating media assistance, Measures of Press Freedom and Media Contributions to Development offers a critical reflection on the theories and tools of measurements that are used by the academic, donor, and civil society communities. A variety of theoretical and geographic perspectives are drawn upon, offering a timely debate from both academics and practitioners." (Publisher description)
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"The study identifies and analyses two types of citizen journalism: non-institutional and institutional. Exploratory in nature, the study is underpinned by four specific objectives, namely to: analyse the social context of the practice of citizen journalism in Africa; assess the technological basis
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of citizen journalism, especially the processes by which new information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape, and become shaped by, human attempts at citizen journalism; ascertain the level of uptake of citizen journalism by conventional media, as a way of establishing how citizen journalism becomes institutionalised in the process of adoption; and evaluate the democratic value of citizen journalism, as a way of appreciating the possible transformative power of citizen journalists. The overall aim of the study is to make sense of the democratic premium that initiators of various non-institutional and institutional citizen journalism projects place on the phenomenon. As such, this is an ethnographic study that seeks to tease out people’s experiences of the practice of citizen journalism." (Back cover)
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"This study sets out to historically contextualize Chinese support to the African mediascape, arguing that contemporary Chinese media interventions in Africa must be seen as part of China's long history of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle in its project of national and international identifi
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cation. The study concludes that current Chinese support to Africa's media takes the tripartite form of infrastructural realignment, ideological expurgation and cultural reproduction. It ends with a call for a critical-theoretical trajectory for understanding Sino-African media relations, suggesting a triangulated theoretical approach that draws on a critical cultural studies tradition. Key to this theoretical project is the need to study China in Africa's mediascape in terms of how its influence will, if at all, reconfigure African media production, representation, identity, consumption and regulation." (Abstract)
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"Chinese assistance to African media is not new. What is different now is that it is being administered in the post-Cold War era with a greater degree of openness." (Page 52)
"This book examines, from theoretical and empirical perspectives, the claims that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are catalysts of democratic change in Africa. Contributors do so from optimist, pragmatist-realist, and pessimist stances through analyses of various forms of evide
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nces—including words and deeds of various political actors and organizations or institutions, from government units to political parties and party leaders to civil society organizations and minority or marginalized groups. The main focus is, therefore, on the interrelated concepts of e-participation and e-democracy." (Preface)
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"Digital communications technology does many new things. Its spread means that it is no longer a case of a tiny minority of professionals and politicians having a monopoly on mass communication. Implicit in the observations of this report, is the recognition that - amongst other things - digitisatio
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n also disrupts old boundaries between inter-personal and mass communication. What used to be the subject of, or product of, communication between a few individuals, can increasingly be put into the public sphere. Much of this content remains personal in quality, despite it being public in availability. But there is also much that is of public interest. In some ways, this therefore threatens those institutions supposed to be specialising in public interest information. In other ways, it can help them not only reinforce this mission, but to also take a step towards expanding their role into becoming wider public interest content and commun-ications agencies. They can, in short, be the motive force that pulls personal conversations into focussing on journalism that is of common public interest. That image of leading the transformation of mass communication is, however, just one of the scenarios outlined in this report. The others point to lesser roles, even including extinction. It should be noted that scenarios are not predictions of the future, but attempts to highlight a range of possible options. They help guide action in one or other direction. The complication is that digitisation and all that comes with it can deal a surprise to even the best-considered scenario possibilities. Who would have thought that a search engine company (Google) could become such an effective player in the advertising arena? Or that newspaper newsrooms would start hiring video-capable staffers, or that some cell-phone companies would move into distributing content? Could anyone have guessed that a company like Twitter could attract and burn millions of dollars of investment without even a proper business plan about how it intends to make money? The digital revolution, if it is to succeed, needs to have top quality cadres in the newsrooms. In the face of these kinds of developments, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands and take a come-what-may approach. That’s preferable to the illusion of controlling and managing the process. At the same time, between these two extremes of paralysis and over-planning, there is a broad direction that can be identified and pursued. We may not know exactly where we are going, but - as this Report seeks to do - we can look at where we are and what’s immediately ahead. More fundamentally, however, there’s worth in remembering from whence we come. In other words, while looking at the present and near-present, and keeping an eye on what future scenarios we can imagine, we can hold onto our values. In the context of public broadcasting, these values are - in a nutshell - to focus mass communications on deepening democracy and development. These public interest values remain all the more valid in a time when the historical informational “service” model is being expanded to also function as a public interest communicational mode. Keeping these ideals aloft helps state-owned broadcasters steer a course between delivering government-interest and commercial-interest content. They help to define the meaning of universal access in the face of financial pressures and socio-economic divides. They empower people to see the big picture and to bring concerted action to bear on it. In sum, they help us reinvent “public service broadcasting” in a fashion appropriate to its contemporary possibilities. Roll on digitisation in Southern Africa - and the transformation of at least some state-owned broadcasters to become leaders in this process." ("Summing up", page 53-54)
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"I have been privileged to compile this anthology of essays, stories and testimonies of Africa’s top media executives who, through their actions and visionary leadership, are re-shaping and strengthening Africa’s fledgling media companies and institutions. Their touching real-life stories are an
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inspiration to all who work and desire to see Africa succeed and to have its voice heard above the din of the new digital age. A financially robust African media that is also independent and pluralistic will serve to give meaning to and strengthen the continent’s nascent democracy and contribute to the lifting of its people out of grinding under-development, poverty and related ills. These media leaders, in sharing their stories with the rest of Africa and the world, show that the real test of what works and does not work in managing and leading a successful media firm too often lies in the field and at times does not necessarily follow orthodoxy." (Editor's note)
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"The past five years have seen a mushrooming of media development organisations and media outlets. The period has also seen greater and better-coordinated civic activism in support of media development. There has generally been a diversity of media content, reflecting the plurality of media outlets.
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There has been more legislative and policy change, although, in some cases, the state has proved to be a stumbling block in the implementation of the laws. There is evidence of a diversity of media development initiatives in Zambia – some of these are originated and financially supported by the media themselves while others are a partnership between media support organisations and donors. There is a need for the involvement of multiple actors in any media development initiative, as evidenced in the success of a multi-stakeholder campaign for legislative reforms and the withdrawal of VAT on newspapers and magazines. Media development activities need to have an inbuilt sustainability plan in order to have a lasting impact. Donor support needs to have less conditionality and promote the recipient’s independence and innovativeness." (Summary & conclusions, page 66)
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"The contribution in this book cast a spotlight into dark, often neglected, corners of the "information society" as articulated in the World Summit on the Information Society. Several very different layers are illuminated, from the philosophical underpinnings of the role of information in society, t
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o the context and manner in which the concept has recently emerged into global consciousness, to how it can be deployed in practice to maximize benefits to society. An edited volume is well suited to covering these diverse ways of thinking about the topic as it offers the opportunity to bring together authors with different backgrounds and approaches." (Publisher description)
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